Lyle Rihannsu's page

About Lyle Rihannsu

Personality:

Lyle is generally polite and pleasant though he has a tendency to behave in odd ways stemming from having grown up in a tower- thinking out loud, looking startled when it starts raining on him, etc. Has a tendency to lapse into magic-babble and mage occasional puns and jokes, most of which have his warrior-type companions as the target. He also has a large vocabulary and tends to use odd, long or unusual words, often all three at once. In combat his normally warm and open personality becomes much colder, and often he strikes to kill rather than disarm or stop, particularly when fighting people he considers evil. This sometimes brings him into trouble, which he never apologizes for. He is aware his Tiefling heritage is off-putting or anger-inducing to some, but refuses to take offence or get angry about the reactions of others to his appearance, and usually tries to engage them in a rational, philosophical discussion. Failing that, he's not too proud to flee.

Appearance:

No two tieflings look exactly like; this is a maxim known by many, but Lyle is indeed its literal incarnation. Rather than having his predominant shade be red or purple or even blue, it is instead… green. He has pale green hair, bright green eyes and white skin with the tiniest tinge of viridian. He has two small white horns on each side of his temples, and due to his lacking a tail he is otherwise indistinguishable from an elf. His resemblance to the latter comes partly from the 'distorted' shape of his ears, not the neat pointed appearance of the elves but similar enough to be undistinguishable without close observation.

Lyle usually dresses himself in a long dark-grey trench coat atop a dark green shirt, hardy leather trousers supported by a thick brown belt, strapped to the right of which is a nasty, long, metal-threaded whip. He also has carefully stored away in his backpack a black top hat which he dons whenever his horns need to be disguised or he merely feels like he requires an extra boost to his attractiveness and self-confidence. Top-hats are cool, as his father always taught him.

Black blade:

Lyle's attempts to conquer the part of his personality that makes him so cold in combat were not helped when, one day, his tail started talking to him. Initially dismissing it as one of the Gods screwing with him because he'd spent an entire week arguing the idiocy of faith with an Archpriest, he was eventually forced to discover that he'd been saddled with a fully intelligent weapon. One which, sadly, was far less fettered when it came to ruthlessness in combat. Since that day Lyle has grown accustomed to his whip's voice in his mind. Most days he can fight it off, the other days he is able to persuade his whip not to commit any action too extreme. The logical recourse would naturally be to get rid of the whip, but sadly a streak of previously-unknown sentimentality keeps him from doing so. And besides, the blade is quite superlative for channelling lightning through.

Weapon's purpose: Kill all enemies in combat, where that would not conflict overly with its Chaotic Good alignment.

Backstory:

He probably should have expected this; after spending five years locked up in his precious tower, researching magic and the Planes, he should have expected some… contamination. But who could expect it to arrive in this form?

These were Marcel Rihannsu's thoughts when he went to visit a favoured prostitute of his in the large town of Logas, and found himself presented with a crying, horned, tailed and ever so faintly green baby. The mistress of the house promptly had him and the infant chucked onto the streets, and the muddy wizard grimly trudged home.

For twenty years, Marcel had endured the rigours of being an adventuring wizard; suffering through stultifying party members, brutish fighters, ungrateful villagefolk and generally people who didn't realize that the only thing stopping a mage from blasting the world with arcane fire was the fact that he'd probably burn his books while he did it.

Finally, he had earned enough gold and gained enough knowledge and power to have created a small tower all his own; a respite from the world, nearly untouchable by arcane attempts and completely unfindable by mundane means. Apart from his brief trips to town to buy supplies, scan through the book merchant and satisfy his physiological needs, Marcel was free to indulge in hours upon hours upon months of blissful magical research.

Well, until this latest interruption.

Returning to his tower, Marcel took off his coat and arranged it on a workbench into something resembling a mattress, and placed the infant upon it. Hmm tail, horns, discoloured skin and yes eyes I haven't seen since I was trying to track down that archdemon in Cheliax… I would appear to have a tiefling son.

Bother.

With a sigh, Marcel took some random syllables from a favourite spell of his and named his child Lyle, then proceeded to convince some hysterically laughing demonic servants of his to try and refurnish his wardrobe into a room with a crib.

Despite the quite astounding parental ineptitude of his father, Lyle managed to grow up healthy and fit, even if he had inherited his father's incredible muscularity; that is to say, he usually required a twenty-foot run-up to get the tower's stone doors open. Despite some clumsy and *CRASH*-causing attempts in the beginning, Lyle proved a useful research partner to his father, becoming more and more adept with his tail until he could calmly slide ten jars and a box off the shelf and place it on the workbench before Marcel even realized he needed them. In return, Marcel instructed Lyle in some of his magical knowledge, and his father's proudest moment was when Lyle summoned lightning and gave a terrible, malicious smile when Marcel asked what the exact method for dealing with a recalcitrant meat-shield was.

It was some years before Marcel took Lyle into town with him. Lyle was quite surprised to find the other townspeople pointing, shouting and in some cases throwing things at him. Marcel, adventurer though he was, had spent several years in isolation from the world and so had forgotten something about tieflings. Namely, as he told his son after they returned to the tower, that they were mistrusted, feared and often despised on sight. Hesitantly, Marcel offered magical disguise as a solution to Lyle, but the latter refused; the sight of the jeering townsfolk had stung his newly-formed pride, and he resolved to attempt to befriend them.

It took the better part of the year for this to occur; oftentimes Marcel went with him and let him talk to the other children, sometimes they shared errands. Slowly, the people got more used to Lyle- aided by the fact that he was pleasant and polite, even if he did have far too great a vocabulary than was deemed healthy for a boy. The clincher was, oddly enough, his tail. The townspeople were astonished and then impressed by the ease and dexterity he displayed with his natural implement, and once convinced that he was no pickpocket they became interested in first his tail, then his other powers and finally himself.

One day, Lyle was browsing through the marketplace when he noticed something for sale in one of the traders' carts- a whip. Fascinated by its similarity with his tail, he bought it from the man- like the townspeople, Lyle was unknowing of its origin and function in the Dungeons of Cheliax. He practiced with it and eventually became as adept with it as he was with his tail, with the added convenience of an increased reach; plus, this implement wasn't attached to his butt.

Lyle's life, while not joyous but certainly content, came to an end when an enemy named Danzo Marcel had inadvertently made many years ago tracked him down. Livid at the discovery that Marcel, rather than worrying and preparing and scheming for his enemy's arrival all these years, had instead been quietly getting on with his research, he stormed the castle with a small army. Most of these were taken down by the demons, traps and other enchantments the wily Marcel had set in place as a precaution over the years, but eventually Danzo and a small group of the hired thugs broke into Marcel's inner chamber. Attempting to teleport the boy away, Marcel was stopped in his casting by a rapier through the chest, sending him to his knees. The distraught Lyle ran forward to try and help him but was kicked back by Danzo easily, flinging the weak tiefling across the room, before he drove the blade through Marcel's chest once more. Shrieking with anger, Lyle summoned a charge of lightning in his palm and ran at Danzo again, only to be similarly rebuffed. Danzo ran his blade through Marcel's chest a third and final time, causing his breathing to stop after a final burst of blood from his throat, his body crashing to the ground, his eyes still.

Loudly, Danzo began to laugh and gloat over his enemy's corpse, proceeding through an itemized list of the wrongs Marcel had done to him in the past. Lyle, collapsed against the opposite wall, felt a wave of anger and sadness and pain slowly drive him along like a wave, propelling him into a small cube within his mind with walls of clear glass. The tiny spark of an idea erupting, coursing through the walls of that little cube, Lyle slowly reached for a small knife stowed in a shelf behind his back…

None of his hired thugs were quite sure if Danzo knew what had killed him. Certainly, he turned around- more due to the spasming contortions of his body than any effort of will. The question was whether his brain was still active or fried to cinders behind those astonished eyes as he watched Lyle, clutching his cut-off tail by its bloody stump, charge another ball of lightning in his free hand and, with a series of loud whi-*CRACK*s- proceed to channel it through his improvised whip and send it slicing out at each thug, downing them in a brief festival of sparks and spasms.

It was nearly two weeks before Lyle emerged from that tower; dumping the corpses of the thugs and the man who had killed his father out the door did not count. When he did, he was a man. A heavy, scroll-stuffed backpack in his hand and his tail, leathered and hardened and stringed with steel, tied at his side. Pulling a scroll from his jacket, he faced the tower and read out the words. Slowly and timorously, the tower began to descend gracefully into the ground, inch by inch foot by foot, accelerating as it slid beneath the earth.

Nodding solemnly, Lyle turned and began walking to town.

Lucky that he did, for nearly immediately after he set off an immense, deep *BANG* was heard as a small storm of fire erupted out of the ground, gold and green and red fireworks streaking into the sky as Lyle leapt back with a shocked yelp. When the spectacle was over, the ground surrounding where the tower had stood was burnt into an enormous mosaic of obsidian and glass, shining like the heart of a crystal sun in the daylight.

Lyle proceeded to swear lustily at the absent Marcel, cursing both his vanity, his disregard for innocent bystanders and "your bloody wizard's obsession with geological vandalism!"

Finally calming down, Lyle smiled faintly for the first time since Marcel had fell in that room two weeks ago my god two weeks already so long ago but it seems like it happened just now just this second watching him fall watching him stop being Lyle sighed and wiped a tiny glittering tear away from his bright eyes, and strode away over the sands. Goodbye, Marcel. Father.

Lyle inherited many things from his father; an obsession, nearly a fetish for magical research and logical rigour, a certain whimsicality linked with an enjoyment of the vagaries of grammar and vocabulary, but above all a respect for intelligence and for sentience; a detached researcher's respect, but respect nonetheless.

With one difference, thought Lyle with an inner voice colder than anything he had heard within himself before. I will not leave alive those who destroy. Gripping his whip so hard his hand turned white, he stared intently off into the horizon. I will not let them end me like they ended him. Like they would end others. He was too good, and that gave him a stupid death. This will not be my fate.

It will not.

Later life (for higher-levelled games):

Since he struck out on his own, Lyle has followed in his father's footsteps as an adventurer; helping people, clearing dungeons, protecting the peace, and making terrible puns which mostly fly over his comrades' heads. Unlike his father however, the trail of bodies he has left behind him is noticeably thicker. While many of the dead were cruel or twisted by malice and vice, their number it still great. Sometimes at night this bothers him; he can almost hear his father's voice, varying from chiding to nearly fearful. In the thick of battle however his whip still strikes true and his gaze is still cold.

With the proceeds of his adventures Lyle has embarked on, like Marcel, building his own tower refuge. Construction is proceeding to his satisfaction, his adventuring experience aof great use in designing and setting in place a veritable labyrinth of magical tricks and traps, plus some quite nasty mundane ones. Money is however still required to finish his tower, so Lyle continues to adventure, a well-respected man in several cities due to his exploits. Thus far however he has successfully avoided the public eye.

Yucale:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4c-nSwo2jOvVzhoRWxqZElfY0E

Entombed with the Pharaoh:

"Oh...damnation" muttered Lyle as he bit the dust. With a muffled 'WHUMP' he collapsed straight onto the ground in a neat descent, no bending of knees of spreading of arms, just an even 90-degree tip over onto the sand beneath him. Blearily, Lyle craned his neck up and looked around. "Yep... still dunes. Yep... still lost in a godforsaken desert. Yep... still damnably COOL!"

Since he had first entered this accursed place, Lyle had discovered a particularly interesting torment- mental dehydration. He had set out into the desert to test his new spell for enduring heat, with enough water (he thought) to last him a few days before he would turn around and go back to civilization. While his spell worked admirably in staving off the worst of the blazing sun and the freezing nights, his navigation skills were significantly less effective, and thus he found himself wandering around the desert and, in his current condition, face down upon it. Interestingly, he had found that when surrounded by desert and sun and sand oh god so much blasted SAND the Tiefling body instinctively reacted as if it was in fiery-hot heat; even when it wasn't. Consequently, this meant massive sweating and a matching massive thirst. Canteens long exhausted, Lyle found himself here. Where he was. "Bother."

As he lay there, eyes closed, watching the scorpions and the snakes and the jackels and the bright purple-green dragons dancing in front of his vision, a tiny space at the back of his mind began pondering how to phrase a water-creation spell; would it involve conversion of earthly material to liquid, or the more distillation of water from the sky...

Luckily enough, his last ponderings and final stages of dehydration-death were interrupted by the arrival of a small caravan of Osiri nobles and their halfling slaves. Taking pity on him, the halflings shielded him from the nobles' vision- as they doubtless would have left him to die- and hoisted him up onto a cart, where one of the halflings with healing powers waved her hand through the air creating water droplets to course down Lyle's throat. "Now why can't I do that were his last words before he woke up in what he was told was the metropolis of Sothis.

Equipment giving circumstantial bonuses:
Comfort's Cloak:Comfort’s cloak grants a constant endure elements effect to the wearer, and grants a +4 competence bonus to saves against disease, energy drain, effects that cause fatigue or exhaustion, and poisons. Furthermore, while the wearer is resting he regains twice his Hit Dice in hit points for 8 hours of rest instead of the typical 1 hit point per Hit Die. When taking a full 24 hours of rest, the character regains 5 times his Hit Dice in hit points instead of twice his Hit Dice in hit points.
Helm of Comprehend Languages and Read Magic:The wearer gains a +5 competence bonus on Linguistics checks to understand messages written in incomplete, archaic, or exotic forms.

Weight Total:100-200 something. I have a carrying capacity of over 2500lb so not a big issue.

Light: , Med: , Heavy:

Cash:

3700gp

Physical Description:

No two tieflings look exactly like; this is a maxim known by many, but Lyle is indeed its literal incarnation. Rather than having his predominant shade be red or purple or even blue, it is instead… green. He has pale green hair, bright green eyes and white skin with the tiniest tinge of viridian. He has two small white horns on each side of his temples, and due to his lacking a tail he is otherwise indistinguishable from an elf. His resemblance to the latter comes partly from the 'distorted' shape of his ears, not the neat pointed appearance of the elves but similar enough to be undistinguishable without close observation.

Lyle usually dresses himself in a long dark-grey trench coat atop a dark green shirt, hardy leather trousers supported by a thick brown belt, strapped to the right of which is a nasty, long, metal-threaded whip. He also has carefully stored away in his backpack a black top hat which he dons whenever his horns need to be disguised or he merely feels like he requires an extra boost to his attractiveness and self-confidence. Top-hats are cool, as his father always taught him.